Palau de Les Arts opened the season with Massenet’s “Manon,” in a production from the Paris Opera, and two international stars in the main roles: Lisette Oropesa and Charles Castronovo . The Paris Opera production was directed by the talented Vincent Huguet . He sets the action in Paris around 1920, in the Charleston era, and puts into the narrative the revolutionary artist Josephine Baker (Who debuted in Paris in 1925).
Baker leads Manon throughout the story as a sex symbol, bringing her to the luxury, the dancing and the casino scene. It is Baker whose Manon leaves her with, abandoning her modest life with Des Grieux at the end of the second act. Huguet even introduces a musical number with a song by Baker before act two, and shows how Baker teaches Manon to dance, which would be a metaphor of the feminism and the revolution that the artist made in Paris.
It is very difficult to add music from another period into an opera production with good results, but Huguet’s inventiveness does not distract from the original plot. His original concept adds realism to the action and makes the characters more human and believable. He directs with a naturalistic and realistic acting approach, and every single artist on the scene is clearly defined.
He treats the chorus as if they were individual characters rather than a uniform group of people and their appearances are full of actions. Every single line of the principal singers is directed, giving sense to everything, running away.
